Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks exchanged Twitter jabs over the DNC hack

National Security Agency contractor turned whistle-blower Edward
Snowden chided WikiLeaks on Thursday for its indiscriminate
approach to leaking information, barely a week after the
antisecrecy organization published 20,000 emails that were
obtained in a hacking from the Democratic National Committee.

The organization possesses a "hostility to even modest curation,"
Snowden wrote on Twitter.

WikiLeaks has attracted harsh criticism for failing to curate the
information it leaks based on what is legitimately in the
public's interest. The organization has also made it a policy not
to redact sensitive personal information that may be contained in
the documents it exposes.

Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.

The public clash is of particular interest, given Snowden's
previous collaboration with the organization. WikiLeaks came to
Snowden's aid in 2013, when he first leaked information about the
NSA's surveillance programs and sought a country in which he
could request asylum.

WikiLeaks submitted multiple asylum requests on Snowden's behalf,
including to Ecuador, which granted WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange asylum at its embassy in London. A WikiLeaks researcher
eventually accompanied Snowden when he fled from Hong Kong to
Moscow, where he now lives in exile.

Glenn Greenwald, a journalist whom Snowden gave some of the
leaked NSA documents in 2013, has also criticized WikiLeaks for
failing to withhold information that might invade people's
privacy and is not a matter of public interest.

"Most of the information that we have withheld I've
withheld on the grounds that it would invade people's privacy,
like emails that the NSA has collected between people, documents
where they accuse people of engaging in certain bad acts without
any proof,"
Greenwald told Slate on Thursday, referring to the process by
which he had chosen to release the NSA documents Snowden gave
him.

"We've done a lot of withholding information in order to
protect people's privacy or reputational interests or
otherlegitimate interests," Greenwald added. "We
tried to balance these two competing values. WikiLeaks has said,
criticizing us, that they no longer believe in any form of
redaction. I do not ascribe to that view."

The latest WikiLeaks release of hacked DNC documents
has prompted concerns that Russia is intervening in a US
presidential election — there is evidence that the DNC hack
originated inside Russia and that the documents were given to
WikiLeaks because of the organization's ties to the Russian
government.